The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#177) "Wildfire" by Michael Martin Murphey - Years ago, I was on a road trip with a friend when this song came on the radio. I had been driving for quite a while, lost in my thoughts as we cruised through the Ohio night, the miles thumping away beneath the tires. The radio was turned low, just on as background noise, and at some point started picking up a "soft rock" or "light hits" blob of gelatin broadcasting from a nearby town. I turned it up when I heard "Wildfire", because I'd always liked it, and those were the days before just about any song was readily available somewhere on-line. There were certain songs of "yesteryear" you were lucky if you happened to catch on the radio, and even by then (mid 1990s),"Wildfire" wasn't making it onto many playlists, "light" or otherwise.

When I turned up the radio, my buddy, who was slouched down in the passenger seat and hadn't said anything for a while (I'd assumed he was asleep), tilted his head toward me and groaned, "Dude, what the hell are you listening to...?"

"It's 'Wildfire', it's a classic," I replied. "Go back to sleep."

Another mile or two passed in silence. Murphey sang of "planting by moonlight", of "hoot owls outside windows" and "horses busting down stalls" on "cold Nebraska nights." My buddy outright snorted with contempt.

"Oh my God!" he cried. "How much weed did this guy smoke!?"

He was trying to be funny, but his underlying indignation was hard to miss. This was definitely not his type of music. All through Pennsylvania, while he was driving, I'd been subjected to Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM. That was pretty much all he listened to, which meant this song's drifty, mellow essence was not only something he had no taste for, but something he could hardly have wrapped his mind around.

I couldn't really blame him. It's easy to make fun of an intimately non-threatening song like "Wildfire", even more so the era from which it came - that aesthetically laughable decade we call the 1970s, that showed up to the party dressed in pea green and burnt yellow. This is where "Wildfire" comes from, and the impulse to dismiss it as part of that time when America wasn't quite sure who it was, or where it was going, or how it really felt, is completely understandable.

But "Wildfire" isn't a cheesy 70s ballad. Unlike the cheesy 70s ballads I've placed on this list (and defended), there is a rich emotional depth and texture here that is not immediately realized. This song is not really about what the lyrics are saying at all...it's a parable, a metaphoric examination of the psychological condition we all experience as we wander the taiga of our minds, hoping to figure things out. And of all the songs I'll want along with me on 1/48/50, all the songs I've ever listened to, it probably has less to do (as in, not at all) with being high, or impaired in any way. To the contrary, "Wildfire" represents the moments in life when we are as sober and lucid and aware of everything that has ever happened, is happening now, and could possibly happen in the future, as we will ever be.

"She's coming for me, I know / And on Wildfire we're both gonna go..."

#178) "Pink Elephants on Parade" from 'Dumbo' - There are several good Disney movies, especially from the old days, but 1941's Dumbo stands out for me. It's gorgeous, simply gorgeous: beautiful animation, fun characters, a nice balance of humor and pathos. Even the scene with the crows, in spite of being maligned by some for being racist (unfairly, in my estimation), has what I believe to be a grandness to it. The entire movie swims in a certain melancholy that Disney wouldn't achieve again until 1977's The Rescuers.

It's impressive what the animators and writers were able to come up with here, considering they had been instructed at the outset of production to keep everything simple and under cost. (This, after reportedly losing their financial shirts with the release of 'Fantasia' the year before.)

What I love about "Pink Elephants..." is how musically tight it is, and this is what will actually matter on 1/48/50. From the first splattering bray of tuba to the final piccolo tremor ushering in a new day, in which Timothy mouse and Dumbo are in a tree with no idea how they got there, the piece is at once rousing, moving, fun, and funny.  Disney has had quite a few memorable musical numbers over the years, but I view "Pink Elephants..." as the first precipitous step out of the cautious "Snow White"-style golden age, straight into the silver, the moment when a certain amount of adult(ish) flash and humor became requisite in any children's movie.

That this four minutes of madness exists at all has become, like the scene with the crows, historically significant. Timothy and Dumbo accidentally getting drunk, which inspires their night of 'pink elephants', would never happen in a Disney movie today. Moreover, the entire sequence is surprisingly trippy, even kind of edgy, for 1941, ahead of its time for what it reveals. And yet for all of that, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb; it fits well within the framework of the story.

And from what I remember of my younger days, the aforementioned madness is a pretty accurate portrayal of how a drunken night plays out. In my time, the best of them always reached a fevered pitched and then ended, like this one does, with remnants of the night - leftover flecks of the craziness - drifting down and becoming sunrise clouds.

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.

"What'll I do, what'll I do, what an unusual view....!"

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#175) "I Am Waiting" by The Rolling Stones - Not entirely sure if it's true, but I remember hearing or reading somewhere that The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was so frustrated by the success of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album (released on the heels of his critically acclaimed Pet Sounds), it cast him into a protracted state of depression and self-loathing so deep rooted - and exacerbated by drugs and alcohol - that it tore at the fabric of his sanity. That's unfortunate, because he was a major talent, and I've never thought the Beach Boys get enough credit for what they contributed to American music. But Wilson may have been totally imagining things. I've never really heard anyone attempt to compare The Beatles and The Beach Boys. All things considered it's kind of apples to oranges.

The comparison I've most often heard in my life is between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The Fab Four get the most press in the greatness department, but listening to The Stones - to certain songs, at certain moments - I sometimes find it hard to decide which band was - on balance - the more magnificent.

"I Am Waiting" is not a song likely to be included in a Rolling Stones weekend on the radio (er, does such a thing still happen...?). It doesn't possess the electrified sexual tension of Satisfaction or Miss You, the anthem-worthy energy of Start Me Up, the mesmerizing sense of madness wrought by Sympathy for the Devil or Jumpin' Jack Flash, or the drenched, down-to-Earth sorrow of Wild Horses or Angie (two songs that, I'd say, handily place them shoulder-to-shoulder with The Beatles). Recorded in 1966, a deep track on a largely inauspicious album (all things considered), "I Am Waiting" strikes me as a last vestige of the clean cut "lads" first presented to America the way the Beatles and countless other British "invaders" were, a band still waiting (no pun intended) to be allowed to develop into what it would.

But it's compellingly beautiful in its austerity, the harmonies and vocals are striking. Reading the lyrics, I'm sure the song is drug-inspired, in that bright, sunny, not-sure-quite-what-is-being-said way bands had to go about such business at the time, kind of like The Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping". Nothing overt here, just nudge-nudge, wink-wink...they don't say, but you know...

When all is said and done, The Stones have long outlasted The Beatles, and The Beach Boys, so maybe that means they win.

"I am waiting, I am waiting / Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere..."

#176) "Time Marches On" by Tracy Lawrence - Recorded during a uniquely creative period in country music (mid to late 1990s, when larger, more cinematic themes that transcended patriotism and redneck pride were being tried on for size), "Time Marches On" is a subtly but potently evocative song, depicting a family growing up - and old - across a span of some forty years.

There are plenty of songs that speak to the passage of time, to changes in attitudes and styles and the enduring nature of the human spirit through it all.  But "Time Marches On" is unusual. Written by Bobby Braddock, one of country music's hit making machines, it avoids cheesy sentimentality by depicting the family's vulnerabilities as the years pass, rather than its strengths. It offers smartly placed, and in some cases haunting, cultural references to specific time periods, and never once are we led to believe everything's all okay...or at all okay.

At the same time, never does "Time Marches On" come across like a country song trying to be something it's not. It's a country song stepping outside the box surely, but in doing so, illustrates vividly what a country song can be.

Now considered a new classic, "Time Marches On" still haunts me, for its manufacture of a dark beauty too rare in the genre, and for Lawrence's thick Southern accent working so well within the framework of the melody. Sometimes that drawl, when it's laid on too thick (by Lawrence or anyone else), can be a distraction. Not so here.

I was working in country radio when this song was released. I liked it right away, but was still too young then to wrap my head around what it was saying, had only just emerged from the part of life when time seems to move slowly.

20 years on, and oh how I've seen it march.

"Mama is depressed, barely makes a sound / Daddy's got a girlfriend in another town..."

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#174) - Smokey Robinson.

A superb songwriter, with a superb voice, Smokey Robinson pretty much helped create the Motown sound (and musical business model) in the 1960s, composing some of the greatest pop songs of all time, not just for himself, but many other artists.

I was not around for his hey-day, but I remember very specifically where I was when I discovered Smokey Robinson, and pretty much it was exactly how one might imagine he would be discovered. Certainly how he should be (in other words, I think the man would be pleased).

It was September 1988; I was cruising up the north shore of Minnesota, on my way to Thunder Bay, Ontario with my parents. I was fifteen, and not in a good way. I had just watched my first true love go off to college, and had been left utterly heart broken, racked not just by the pain of parting ways, but the sense that I was being left behind (saddled with three more long years of high school). Lost in that hazy and desolate borderland between boyhood and manhood, I knew my feelings for her were futile (truthfully, they had been all along), which sort of made everything seem futile, but I was unable to shake them.

I didn't want to shake them. I didn't want them to go away.

I had with me Smokey's greatest hits on cassette; I don't recall which it was, Volume 1 or 2 or some other compilation; I'd only bought it for the ride because I recognized "Ooo Baby Baby", and was going through a major Sixties phase, like nearly everyone at the time.  But slouched down in the back seat with my Walkman, I submerged myself, and although these days it might seem lamely fashionable to say what I'm about to say, it really was the best medicine I could have received for what was ailing me at the time, nothing less than emotionally transcendent, right when I needed it to be. Smokey didn't make the pain go away. Instead, his music made it palatable, and digestible, if that makes any sense.

I can't even say his music defined my teenage years as a whole, but it's taken up permanent residence in a small but critically important corner of my mind nevertheless. And it holds up all these years later, in ways that, quite honestly, some of the music that DID "define" my teenage years doesn't.

Simple, sweet and soulful, I'd bet it's Smokey Robinson and the Miracles being played in God's waiting room.

Even in the 1980s, he had some great songs, among them, 1981's "Being With You". But it's in Motown, in the Sixties, with the Miracles, that Smokey is best remembered, for keeping our rawest, most intimate emotions in perspective, lending grace and style to an otherwise uncertain time that witnessed the world coming apart at its seams.

True to form, Robinson, now into his seventies, has grown old graciously, been given his due as a living legend, and is still making music.

Here, I list what I believe to be his five best songs, although any bit of Smokey on any road trip of any length in any direction would be welcome. And this is just a small sampling.

"I Second That Emotion"

"Ooo Baby Baby"

"The Tears of a Clown"

"The Tracks of my Tears"

"You've Really Got a Hold On Me"


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Listen to 1987's "When Smokey Sings" from the band ABC, a song that I didn't fricking realize was ABOUT Smokey Robinson until about 2010! The lyrics pretty much say it all.

"Debonair lullabies" indeed...;-)

Amazing. Inspiring. What a road trip should be all about...

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